ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI. It was released to the public in November 2022 and became one of the fastest-growing consumer applications in history, reaching 100 million users in two months.

ChatGPT is trained on an enormous quantity of text from the internet, books, and other sources. It uses that training to predict what words should come next in a given context, producing responses that are often fluent, informative, and contextually appropriate.

Businesses use ChatGPT for drafting emails and documents, summarising information, writing and reviewing code, generating marketing copy, and answering internal questions. Individuals use it for research, learning, creative writing, and productivity tasks.

Key things to know about ChatGPT: it can hallucinate (produce plausible-sounding but factually wrong responses), it does not have real-time internet access by default, its knowledge has a training cutoff date, and its output requires human review before being used in professional contexts.

Related reading: AI Accountability and the Risks of Automated Content

More AI FAQs: Westech AI FAQ Hub